I had lunch with some colleagues yesterday at a small French-inspired cafe which had, by all accounts, "simple, clean food." Sounded good. The topic of conversation turned to global warming and our corupt government, etc., etc., a topic I am all too familar with, as on we ranted with self-righteous anger, periodically checking our cell phones, monitoring when we would need to leave and jump into our fossil fuel guzzling cars to get to the next thing on The Schedule. I started losing my appetite for my $6.95 chicken salad sandwich with chicken and tomatoes and lettuce and bread from who knows where or how, while the minimum wage busboys hauled our dirty dishes into the kitchen, and the parking lot filled with the cars of well-meaning middle class American white collar workers on their 30-minute lunch breaks. The sound of mindless gobbling, my own included, made me feel dizzy and afraid and sad. Something was terribly wrong with this picture.

Drive By Nation at the speed of sound

2008: American Life is just a bowl of merischino cherries?

Thich Nhat Hanh says:

"We are like sleepwalkers, not knowing what we are doing or where we are heading. Whether we can wake up or not depends on whether we can walk mindfully on our Mother Earth. The American dream is no longer possible for the Americans, much less for the rest of the developing nations of the world. We have to have another dream: the dream of brotherhood and sisterhood, of loving kindness and compassion."

But how to achieve this? It's not enough to "know" the "right" thing to do to to slow environmental degradation. We must act with body, speech, and mind. Thankfully, there are people all over the planet who are hearing the bells of mindfulness. There is a growing Slow Food movement, the Bioneers, books like by Barabara Kingsolver and other organizations using their speech and their bodies to effect change.